


we might be hollow but we're brave

by andchaos



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Recreational Drug Use, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:49:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6266536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mandy has never been in love—not like that, anyway. Ian lightens as they venture further down the street and he starts to chatter, waving his free hand around in the air as he talks, and he’s barely looking at her but he’s squeezing her hand and Mandy smiles. Whatever love she feels for Ian is so much better than the other kind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we might be hollow but we're brave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [osborns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/osborns/gifts).



> This was supposed to be for lily at the beginning of March, but we both slacked our asses off. Anyway, what with Mandy's cameo on Sunday, I finally finished this - an ode to my girlfriend, Mandy Milkovich. ♥

          Mandy breathes in. The sun is warm and Ian is laughing beside her, but she doesn’t know about what. Maybe there is no reason; maybe it’s just because Ian likes smoking weed. Luckily, Mandy does too.

          For the first couple of weeks that’s all they do together. They get high and play video games. They get high and talk. They get high and go to dinner—go to the movies—walk around town. Mandy thinks maybe Ian just loves not being sober. She wonders if he has reasons, too.

 

\- - -

 

          Ian kisses her chastely as he passes by her to get into the house. Mandy glances over her shoulder and sees that Ian’s gaze has followed hers to where Mickey is sprawled out on the couch, scratching at the beginnings of a beard on his cheek and shoveling what seems to be an entire bag of chips into his mouth at once. Mandy’s lip curls up. She grabs Ian’s hand and tows him away from the living room and towards her bedroom instead.

          “Get a fucking shave,” she snarls at her brother as they pass the couch. The only response is a flipped up middle finger, and Mandy scoffs as she walks away from him.

          She doesn’t shut the door behind them, just goes about rifling under her bed. Ian’s lounging by her dresser sparking up a cigarette when she turns around, slinging the backpack over her shoulder.

          “Come on,” she says, nodding her head back the way they came.

          “Why’d you hide all that stuff?” asks Ian, following her back out.

          Both their eyes shoot to Mickey on the couch again as they walk back through the living room, and Mandy glares at him until they’re outside and safely away from where he can hear them.

          “So my stupid brothers couldn’t get to it,” she says. She hitches it higher on her shoulder. “They steal all my fucking stuff, it’s annoying.”

          “Oh yeah?” He’s grinning as he skips a step to catch up to where she’s slouching a few feet ahead of him. “What have you got to hide?”

          Mandy shoots him a smirk. “Uppers, downers, you name it. This is just some xanys and weed, but—” She pauses to sling her bag around her front and dig around. When her fingers catch on the little bottle, she pulls it out and tosses it to Ian. “I picked up some poppers for you. Well, for your boyfriend.”

          “He’s not my boyfriend,” Ian says, but he’s smiling too. “Thanks.”

          “Of course.” She shrugs. “Anyway…I wanted us to have a good time today.” She pauses, then coughs when she sees the way his mouth twists down in confusion. “I just mean, what are friends for if they don’t pick up for each other, you know?”

          Ian’s expression clears somewhat. He slings his arm around her shoulder and pulls her closer to him, and she makes a fuss pushing at him and ducking out of the way as he presses his forehead to her temple, his smile nearly pressed to her cheek.

          “What are _best_ friends for,” he corrects.

          Mandy shakes her head, pushes him off of her.

          “What are girlfriends for, you mean,” she says, grinning.

          Ian laughs, a nice laugh, one of her favorites—he clutches at his chest and tosses his head back and he looks good, young, beautiful. Happy. Mandy’s chest pangs, and Ian slings his arm back around her, pressing a kiss into her hair. She lets him, for once.

          _I love you_ , she thinks. She thinks and she thinks and she loves him.

          She watches him swallow.

          “I’m excited for later,” he says.

          Mandy cocks her head. Ian shakes his.

          “For what? The drugs?” Mandy laughs. It sounds bitter and derisive and she knows he knows what she really means. “We get high all the time, Ian.”

          “I know,” he says. He pulls his arm away and she feels cold, but he smiles. It’s a little sad. He aches. She aches. “It’s just nice to forget sometimes, you know?”

          Mandy swallows hard, too.

          “Yeah,” she whispers. She doesn’t, she doesn’t know, Ian doesn’t tell her. “Yeah, I know.”

          Ian holds her hand and she thinks that she wants to forget, she wants to forget, she wants to remember.

 

\- - -

 

          Mandy rolls over in the bed she’s in, slinging her arm around the nearest source of warmth—a waist. She can feel the warmth of his skin and smell the way he smells like _boy_ and she knows, she knows.

          “Ian,” she groans.

          He doesn’t say anything for a moment; he doesn’t even move. Mandy has a fleeting thought that last night finally fucking killed him.

          Then he groans, with his voice all muffled by his pillow, “What?”

          “Are you dead?” she asks. Better to check, she thinks.

          “I wish.”

          He rolls over then out of her grip, and Mandy groans as the loss of his body puts her back in view of the window. The sunlight is streaming in and Mandy wants to fly into outer space just to blow it up.

          “What did we drink last night?” he asks.

          “Everything,” she groans. “Oh my god. Have you seen my shorts?”

          “You kicked them under the dresser before you crawled in,” Ian says. “Mumbled something about how you hate sleeping in jeans.”

          “I do,” she says.

          She rolls over and digs around under his dresser without getting out of his bed, and she manages to snag her shorts before she falls out onto the floor. She pulls them on without even sitting up, jostling the bed and wiggling around until they slide back over her hips. As she buttons them up, she looks back over at Ian, who’s glaring at her.

          “Don’t give me that look,” she scoffs. “You know you can’t go back to sleep after you wake up from a night of drinking. Come on, let’s go get coffee and carbs before I throw up all my fucking organs.”

          “Might be heading that way anyway,” says Ian, but he crawls out of bed behind her as she swings her legs to the floor and pads barefoot across the room. Carl’s the only one still asleep, and Mandy doesn’t bother being quiet as she yawns and heads out for the bathroom.

          Ian crowds in behind her, and they jostle for the sink and the toilet as they relieve themselves and brush their teeth and try washing their face at the same time. It involves a lot of elbowing and shoving and she threatens to piledrive him into the toilet twice, but eventually they work their way around each other and get through their morning routines. Ian leaves as she’s running water through her messed-up hair, and when he comes back, she’s just shutting off the faucet and he’s pulling on a t-shirt, stretching his arms above his head so his joints crack loudly. She wonders how easy it is to fall in love.

          “Ready for breakfast?” he asks. “Fiona’s cooking.”

          Mandy groans. “Can we go to the diner?” she asks, elbowing her way past him and out into the hall. “Newspaper said something about a special going on downtown…someplace called Patsy’s Pies or something?”

          “Never heard of it,” says Ian. “I’ll grab the car keys and meet you outside in five, though. Think you can find the place?”

          “If not, I know a few ex hookups who would be more than happy to make me breakfast.”

          Mandy smiles at him then, all cheekily and faux-innocence, and Ian laughs as he swats her arm and heads down towards the kitchen, in the opposite direction from her as she goes for the other staircase.

          “You don’t gotta go for those losers, Mands,” Ian says as he backs away. “You gotta give yourself a break sometimes.”

          Mandy just laughs and flips him off, and he flips her a smile as jogs away down the stairs. As soon as he’s gone, she looks down, her mouth twisting that way as well.

          Mandy thinks that it could have been this way; in another world, in another life, she and Ian could have been happy. Maybe not in a way she thought, when she first tracked him down, stocking shelves at the Kash N Grab—and maybe not even in a way that the her in this life would like at all—but she thinks that, if things were different, they could have had something worth telling stories about.

          But this—this, she knows, is doomed to be something else altogether. She doesn’t know what. She just knows. And she hopes—god, she hopes, later, when they’re older and wiser and have something better to do with their time than laugh and smoke and think about loving one another, that even if they aren’t made from the stuff of legends, they can still find some sliver of happiness in one another.

          _Give yourself a break_ , she repeats, testing the words in her head before she even thinks about saying them aloud. Then she shakes her head.

          “I’m fine,” she spits, to no one in particular. As long as she’s got Ian—whatever way she’s got Ian—she’s fine.

 

\- - -

 

          Mandy has never been in love. She thought she loved the boy she first kissed behind the bleachers during a dodgeball game and she thought she loved the boy who first asked her on a date to a Northside restaurant and she thought she loved so many boys since.

          “They don’t treat you right,” Ian rages, the second night in a row she comes over after a date gone wrong.

          She has red cheeks and pasta in her hair and she doesn’t care that her favorite date dress is ruined because Timmy or Tommy or whoever thought he could get her out of her clothes if he spilled wine on her, she doesn’t care that he followed her into the bathroom and tried to put his hand up her skirt when she went to clean herself up.

          “No one ever does,” Mandy shrugs. She was angry at the restaurant and she was angry on the walk over but now she’s at Ian’s with her heels on the counter and a chocolate chip cookie that Debbie made in her hand and Ian’s taken on all of her anger himself, and she doesn’t have to think, she doesn’t have to hate. “What’s it matter anyway?”

          “Because you deserve better than that, Mands.” His eyes are wild and his cheeks are red too and she doesn’t understand.

          “You’re more mad that I was,” she muses, stepping away from the counter. “Come on, didn’t you have a date tonight too? You should have used all your energy up then.”

          She smirks but he doesn’t smirk back.

          “Shut up. It’s just bullshit,” he says. “What’s his name? I’m gonna kill him.”

          “If you tried to kill everyone who fucked with me, you’d have more misdemeanors than my brothers,” Mandy muses.

          He still doesn’t laugh but she does and she licks her fingers clean from the cookie, then holds her hand out to him. He watches her for a long moment, brows still drawn tight, but eventually he sighs. His fingers snake their way through the gaps in her own, and she squeezes him tight.

          “Come on,” she says, gentler. “Wanna go back to my place and listen to the new CD I picked up on Thursday?”

          Ian nods reluctantly and she leads the way out of his house, still holding his hand steadfastly in hers.

          Mandy has never been in love—not like that, anyway. Ian lightens as they venture further down the street and he starts to chatter, waving his free hand around in the air as he talks, and he’s barely looking at her but he’s squeezing her hand and Mandy smiles. Whatever love she feels for Ian is so much better than the other kind.

 

\- - -

 

          Ian smiles at her when she turns her head to glance at him over her shoulder, a bright and beautiful and cracked open thing. She grins back automatically, because Ian does things like that to her—wrenches her feelings right out of her chest without permission or thought, without even really trying. She ducks her head and faces forward again as she leads up him the stairs of the abandoned building.

          She has to shoulder the locked metal door hard, but on her third push the rusted lock swings open and they stumble out into the open air. The rooftop is pure cement, dark gray and hot; Mandy’s burned her soles more times than she can count walking barefoot across it. For now, the setting sun has dulled the temperature somewhat, and light wind whips her hair across her face as she crosses to the other edge and sits down on the bench that she and Mickey dragged up here one summer, years and years ago. Now she throws herself down on it, draping herself across the seat, and Ian squeezes into the broken, filthy armchair across from her.

          When Mandy holds out her hand, Ian doesn’t say anything; he just entwines their fingers and swings them gently between them. Mandy laughs.

          “I meant pass me the joint, shithead.”

          “Oh.”

          Ian’s blushing slightly as he unclasps their hands and starts twisting around in his seat to dig the joint they rolled out of his pocket.

          Mandy sparks up and breathes deeply, then passes it over to Ian, who does the same with almost as much finesse. As he exhales, she says, “Man, Ian, are you _ever_ not high?”

          Ian startles a laugh through the last half of his exhale and turns to look at her.

          “I was just not high with you for like, six hours,” he says.

          He’s watching her though, a strange squint to his eyes like he’s trying to suss out her deal, but she doesn’t really have one.

          “You know what I mean,” she says.

          “Not really,” he laughs.

          She laughs too because she doesn’t either. “I just…” She sighs. She breathes in on the joint again to give something to do to her lungs, to her hands. “I just want you to have fun.”

          She can’t look at him as she says it.  She doesn’t know why. Or she does. She shakes her head. Maybe she’s already high.

          “I am having fun, Mandy,” he says. She thinks he misunderstands her as he leans over to shake her shoulder, jostling her. “Trust me, I like hanging out with you.”

          “Of course you do,” she snaps. She wonders if her cheeks are burning. This wasn’t what she meant. She doesn’t know what she meant but it’s not this. “I’m a fucking delight.”

          Ian snorts so hard he messes up his inhale, and then he’s coughing and coughing so hard Mandy thinks he might choke. She chuckles herself, reluctant.

          “Pathetic,” she drawls.

          She snatches the joint from between Ian’s fingers before his wheezing can make it drop and burn out. She takes a long drag, gaze steady on him the entire time. He’s glaring as she shows off, and when she’s done exhaling, she grins.

          “You’re a bitch,” he says, rolling his eyes.

          Mandy smirks. “This bitch and you are meant to be, assface. You’re stuck with me forever.”

          Ian doesn’t laugh like she expected. Instead his gaze is warm, like honey and maple and sand between toes, and she loves him, she loves him.

          “I know,” he says. This time, when he reaches out to entangle their fingers, she’s too shocked to do anything but squeeze back. “And I am so lucky.”

 

\- - -

 

          Ian bursts into her room while she’s doing homework, and the door bounces off the wall.

          “I need a drink,” Ian says.

          Mandy looks him over. His hands are shaking and his eyes are wild and Mandy stands up from her bed and crosses the room to him, takes his hands in her own.

          “What’s wrong?” she asks. “Ian, what happened?”

          “Nothing happened!”

          He tears one of his hands away and runs it through his hair. Mandy bites her lip.

          “I need a drink,” he says again.

          Mandy shakes her head.

          “Sit down,” she coaxes.

          She still has a hold on one of his hands and she eases him towards her bed, but he pulls back. Mandy watches him and he watches her and then he says, and his voice trembles, “Can we take a walk?”

          They walk. Mandy grabs her shoes and they walk. He leads her far down the street and towards an abandoned park that’s only ever inhabited by stoners and drunks anymore and he sits down on one of the swings and twists it, around and around and around. Mandy sprawls out on the woodchips at his feet. His legs threaten to kick her every time he pumps them. Mandy traces the clouds with her eyes and says nothing, she waits.

          Ian says nothing for a long time, too. Mandy counts the passing moments with worried thoughts.

          Then he says, “You know, it won’t be like this forever.”

          Mandy grits her teeth. _We are made from the stuff of legends_ , she thinks.

          Ian waits and breathes and she knows he wants her to agree. She shrugs a shoulder that scrapes against the woodchips through her sweater.

          “It can be,” she says, and her voice is small and she hates it, she hates it.

          Ian snorts. She glances at him from the corner of her eye and then looks away.

          “Tell me what happened,” she says then.

          Ian sighs. When he kicks the ground, dirt sprays against her side. Mandy brushes it off like she does with his murmured apology.

          “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says. Mandy swallows. “Tell me something.”

          She expects him to go on, but he doesn’t. She laughs softly.

          “Tell you what?”

          “Anything,” he gasps, “tell me anything.”

          She _hmm_ s as she mulls it over. The sun is warm through the overcast clouds and her cheeks heat with it, her hands are warm where they scrape and scrape and scrape through the woodchips underneath her.

          “I want to remember this,” she says.

          Ian sighs. “Me, too.”

          She closes her eyes. He wants it and she wants it but that doesn’t mean anything. They’re quiet; she wonders if he’s thinking what she’s thinking and she wonders if he knows what she knows. She thinks that even if they’re on different pages they could still be reading the same story.

          “It can be like this, you know,” she says. Her hands stretch across the woodchips and they seep, warm and sharp, between the webs of her fingers. “Forever.”

          Ian hums. He sounds thoughtful instead of cynical now, and she doesn’t know where his bad mood went but she hopes that it’s gone. If he’s okay, she’s okay. She closes her eyes.

          They are quiet for a long minute and then Ian says simply, “Then it will be.”

 

\- - -

 

          Ian is asleep and Mandy is awake and she watches the ceiling and wonders. They passed out watching movies but the moonlight casts tree-limb shadows above the bed and Mandy can see it flickering, on the closed door, on Ian’s face, on the plastered ceiling.

          He snores sometimes; he snores now. Just once and then his breathing calms.

          Mandy takes in the soft planes of his face and she loves him. He stretches until he takes up most of the twin-size mattress and she elbows him until he grunts, rolls over, squeezes himself in next to the wall. She’s still coming down from the high she worked up earlier, and her hands buzz, her mind is soft, she can feel every inch of her skin against the blankets and her hair against her cheek and Ian’s ankle against hers.

          She’s okay, she thinks.

          Her eyes trace those flickering tree-limb shadows and they sway, they bend, she thinks it might be raining. She can’t focus from the horror movie they were watching but she’s not scared, she has nothing to be scared about from a two-star blockbuster that real life can’t give to her better.

          Ian snores again. She’s alright, she thinks.

          He rolls over again, and she stretches further onto her bed so that he can’t take up as much room as before. Sleeping Ian is selfish; he unwinds himself into all the open space and he spreads out, he abducts. When he meets where she lays steadfast he doesn’t stop—he aligns his chest to her side and slings an arm around her waist and his cheek presses surely into her shoulder. Mandy sighs and reaches up to smooth her fingers through his soft cropped hair.

          Ian breathes evenly. Mandy thinks, _I’ll be just fine_.

 

\- - -

 

          The hottest part of the day beats down hard on the tops of their heads, staining their shoulders blush-red, turning the ends of their noses pink. They stare each other down across the way, challenging, playful.

          Then Mandy laughs as she pulls her dress up and over her head in one swift motion, and she’s left standing there in just her bra and her panties. Ian blinks across at her a few times.

          “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen tits before,” Mandy shouts.

          He’s still standing by her open car door, but Mandy’s already halfway across the grass. When he doesn’t say anything for several more beats, she breaks into a grin.

          “Catch me if you can, then,” she calls, and spins around on one heel. With that she’s sprinting off, away from him and across the empty field. She doesn’t hesitate as she hits the edge before she lifts her arms above her head and dives headfirst off the short decline and plunges into the lake.

          The water is shallow, but deep enough for diving. She hits the bottom quickly and kicks herself back upwards, and she’s just begun to tread when the surface breaks beside her. Mandy shouts out as the waves splash into her mouth, but then Ian’s head pops up beside her with more, smaller ripples, and she laughs as she splashes him back.

          “You asshole,” she says, kicking at him under the water. He grins and grabs for her ankle. “You almost drowned me!”

          “I did not,” he says, still trying to grasp at her. “That splash barely touched you!”

          Mandy sticks her tongue out and dives back beneath the surface, swimming away. The water strangely amplifies and distorts sound at the same time, but she can hear Ian giving chase behind her, can hear the bubbles from his nose when he puffs an exhale, and she can feel his fingers brush her feet every now and again. She pushes her arms faster, and feels the water seep through her bared teeth when she smiles.

          She has to come up for air soon after, and she gasps in the oxygen desperately. Beside her, she can hear Ian panting too, and she flinches, half expecting him to try and pull her under again. When he doesn’t, she turns towards him instead.

          He’s floating on his back, eyes closed and soaking in the glaring sunlight. He must feel her eyes on him though, because she’s barely been looking over at him for a couple of seconds when he rolls his head towards her and cracks one eye open. A lazy grin moseys its way across his face.

          Mandy sends another wave his way, tiny, not even enough to rock him.

          “What are you smirking about?”

          She can hear it in her own voice, the defensiveness, the readiness to pounce. She hates it; she needs it. It’s survival in its own right.

          But Ian is relaxed, swaying his arms this way and that in the water, breaking the surface only to plunge them back upwards and keep himself steady on top of the water. He closes his eyes again and his face rocks back towards the sun.

          “This is nice,” he says simply.

          Mandy clears her throat, but the blockage hasn’t fully returned to the pit of her stomach. She swims a little closer. They’re nearer to dry land here, and her toes brush the bottom on the downstroke of her treading.

          “You got a new boy or something?” she asks, squinting at him.

          Ian laughs. “No.”

          “Old boy come out of the closet for you or something?”

          Ian tilts his head towards her again, and he’s watching. “He will someday,” he says. “That’s not it though.”

          Her hands are tight on her forearms, and she squeezes, then rubs, then squeezes again. She doesn’t need to cover herself from Ian, not like that anyway. She drops her arms.

          “What is it then?”

          “I’m just happy,” Ian says.

          He breaks his position then, sinking most of his body back down into the water. He faces her, brings himself closer with just his arms. They float there together for a moment, in their own suspended bubble, watching and not speaking and watching. It’s not playful anymore. It’s not anything—or it’s something and Mandy doesn’t know what.

          “Happy?” she asks, and her voice almost cracks, she can taste it in the back of her throat.

          “Happy,” he affirms.

          He drifts closer, and Mandy leans her head back. Instead of looking at him, her eyes trace the clouds and the birds and the airplane trails. She can feel the coolness of the lake on her body, the heat of the sun on her face, the smell of the air. And Ian. It feels like summer and summer and summer. Mandy shuts her eyes.

          She says, “Me too.”

 

\- - -

 

          Mandy’s not alright; Ian isn’t either. But they smoke and they walk and they love, and they’re alive. Mandy thinks, _It will be like this forever_. It’s summer and even after it’s not, she will always have this, and that’s enough, that’s everything.

          Mandy breathes out.

**Author's Note:**

> find me [here xoxox](http://bkinney.tumblr.com/post/141151169610)


End file.
